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Monday, January 28, 2013

January 2013 Reports

27 Jan 2013: A long grey week with the snow on the ground, but there was a lot of rain on Saturday night and warm sunshine all Sunday. Great for outdoor work, every trace of snow was melted, and my solar sunboxes were doing well. Solar capture in the day was 19 kWh, totalling both sunboxes and the PV.
Elsewhere in the world... we had the outdoor inauguration of President Obama, Andy Murray made it to the Australian Open final, but lost in 4 sets to Djokovic. There is a breaking news story about a night club fire in Brazil. There's a big economic summit in Davos, Switzerland and David Cameron is digging himself into embarassingly deep snowdrifts with his In/Out European policy. The Mali situation continues. It was the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice. Our new semester starts at the university, and we are running a dual channel of Tall Buildings and Wide Buildings. For the Peveril Solar house:

House annual 5,520, biennial 5,058 kWh.

GSHP annual 3,506, biennial 3,048 kWh. If February is warmish, the figures will come down.

PV annual 3,011, biennial 3,203 kWh. Snow on roof all week....

Sunbox annual 2,416, biennial 2,745 kWh. Biennial going up a bit....

Ground Temperature 10.6ºC . It helped, having two sunny days at the weekend, especially Sunday! (Lowest this winter is 10.4ºC)

20 Jan 2013: Britain has been blanketed with snow all week, and I have published a stop-frame movie of the tobogganing just outside our house.

Collection of Twitter photos compiled
by the Telegraph, of the Helicopter crash

Elsewhere, the world has been gripped by the story of the Algerian gas plant taken over by Islamic terrorists and many hostages held or killed. Barack Obama has been sworn in as President in a private ceremony and the big open air one is tomorrow on Monday. In or Out of Europe is being heavily discussed in England, but isn't it always? Lance Armstrong came clean about his drug-taking on TV with Oprah. A helicopter collided in low cloud with a crane on the new Vauxhall tower and crashed into the streets below - if he had held his course northward he would have been safe, but he got worried about the fog and diverted westward towards Battersea - causing him to hit the crane. Some climbers in Glencoe were killed in a snow avalanche - very sad seeing those faces.
The snow has blanketed our house all week, and so we have terrible figures for PV, Heat pump and Sunbox. According to my iPhone weather, the next smallest glimmer of sunshine isn't expected for another 4 days! We just have to hunker down and hope for better in the Spring.

House annual 5,496, biennial 5,060 kWh. Groan, going up!

GSHP annual 3,505, biennial 3,055 kWh. Oh dear.

PV annual 3,019, biennial 3,202 kWh. Doh!

Sunbox annual 2,420, biennial 2,734 kWh. Nothing in the last week...

Ground Temperature 10.4ºC . Squeaky bum time, I hope we have a bit of sunshine next week! Must not go below 10.0 !!!

13 Jan 2013: Weather has been cold and is predicted to get colder, but the house is snug and warm, and the electricity consumption is still moderate while the energy level below is still good. I like sunny Sundays because it give the ground temperature a bit of help. Snow is falling lightly as I write.

Elsewhere.... the gun debate in the US went ballistic for a while when Piers Morgan and Alex Jones had a hilariously confusing debate on TV, and a gun loving idiot called James Yeager promised to 'start killing people' if the President brought in any form of gun control (look them up on Youtube). The Royal Airforce are supporting the French in missions in Mali. David Bowie produced his first new song for over 10 years. London Underground ran the very first underground steam train along the Circle Line. It has been lovingly restored by a Buckinghamshire Railway Centre for the occasion.
Climatically, Australia has had a sequence of the hottest days ever recorded with continent wide averages temperatures of over 40ºC - with a flashpoint high enough to cause terrible fires. The US has had the hottest year on record, and still the majority of US population seem to deny climate change.

Energy figures are about the same as last week, with the main change being a consistent climb in solar capture from the Sunboxes.

6 January 2012: First report of the year, and so far, it hasn't rained! Well, not in Nottingham, anyway. In 6 days, it has averaged three sunny days, and three overcast days. In the US, the Fiscal Cliff was avoided, and nothing of note happened in the UK. With the weather being so mild, our ground temperature has gone up slightly, and consumption figures are looking better than I hoped.

House annual 5,426, biennial 5,029 kWh, and I will be soooo happy if this gets below 5,000.

March 2015: Work on the solar dehydrator has been progressing well, and it is nearly complete, lacking merely the top surface of the sola...

Peveril Solar House

Welcome to Charging the Earth!

PEVERIL SOLAR is the first house in the UK to be entirely solar heated all year round! It is Carbon Net-Zero. It is an 'Active House' balancing inputs and outputs. PV generation and heating system consumption are in favourable balance using concepts of energy storage. Others claiming houses to be the first date from 2013 (and are unbuilt); this house exists and was carbon zero since 2011.

The name 'Charging' refers to 'storing energy underground': we have custom-built solar collectors, Surya Sunboxes, with ETFE front surfaces, to pump solar heat deep down into the earth. The building's heat pump gets all of this back in Realtime (immediately), Diurnially (later during the evenings) or Interseasonally (in Winter, months after the Summer).

Thus, we are augmenting the heatpump by storing long term heat in the summer, and we are defrosting the ground in winter-spring conditions, supplying solar energy directly to the heat pump, through its ground loop.

The five-way pentangle of Grid, Borehole, Heat pump, PV roof and Sunboxes have made the house Carbon Zero (for metered consumption). It's working, and we will continue to record data, to maintain that efficiency, and write it up in this website through to next year and beyond.

During theAutumn of 2012, we built a small house extension that is ultra insulated, with a higher energy gain than it loses.

Note, that we still have a net import of power from the Grid, because we still need power for lighting, cooking and appliances. But for the building emissions (as opposed to lifestyle emissions), we have achieved a credit balance of the regulated quantities, as recorded by meters.

The web-log follows the project from this general idea in Aug. 2009 to a technology of Surya Sunboxes, which seem to be effective - reducing energy costs of the house. Some of the Tabs will help you to get background and theory. You can click below to 'Follow Blog' to get email notifications - or email me. Please add Comments to the blog entries. If you find items in the Glossary that need explaining better, please ask. Thankyou!

Publications

Equipment sponsor

Kingspan, for Varisol Tubes

Equipment Sponsor

MG Renewables

Equipment sponsor

Ice Energy Heat Pumps

Equipment Sponsor

Holscot, for ETFE panels, re-fronting the Sunbox

About the Author...

David Nicholson-Cole is a Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Nottingham, with 35 years experience of architectural teaching and practice, which has included special interests in construction, building information modelling, tall building design and renewable energy technologies.

Finally, thanks to my deceased aunt, Margaret Cringle (1915-2008) whose legacy paid for most of the cost of this project - as one who was always turning lights out to save electricity, she would be very pleased!